Sourdough French bread is a simple and classic recipe with a fluffy texture and crusty exterior. Knead the night before and allow it to ferment overnight, then shape, rise, and bake the next day. It’s wonderfully simple.
There is nothing better than a crusty loaf of bread. Slice it thick and spread with homemade butter, and now you are speaking my language.
Most French bread recipes call for instant yeast, which I almost never keep in my pantry, except for that rare occasion I want to make this einkorn sandwich bread.
Once you switch to fermenting grains and using wild yeast to leaven bread, it’s hard to go back to the conventional fast-rising breads. It lacks the flavor that develops during that slow rise.
But it is a delicate balance, because that fluffy center can sometimes be a challenge to perfect with sourdough.
These sourdough French baguettes have all the good qualities one can hope for. Crusty outside with a fluffy, tender texture inside. It’s perfect to serve as garlic bread, or with a bowl of soup.
Why you will love this recipe:
- Super simple. Start the night before and allow to ferment and rise overnight. The next day, all you have to do is shape, allow to rise, and bake. It’s a perfect almost-make-ahead side.
- Fermented grains for easier and better digestion. There is no doubt we love sourdough in our house. Not only is it tasty, but the fermentation process helps break down phytic acid, making it more nutritious, and helps break down the gluten, making it easier to digest.
- Delicious. This recipe is everything you love and hope for in a French bread: crusty exterior with a soft and fluffy inside. Use it as a side, garlic bread, or slice it in half to cover with sauce, cheese, and pizza toppings and now you have a pizza bread. This last particular idea was one my mom made us for a quick dinner growing up.
Is French bread the same as sourdough?
No. While they are similar, most French breads are not made with sourdough, but rather with conventional rapid yeast. You can easily make it into sourdough French bread by using this recipe. Just know that most French breads you buy from the store will use yeast.
Sourdough French Bread Tips:
- For a soft, fluffy, sourdough bread baguette, your dough should be on the wetter side. A dry dough will leave you with a drier loaf.
- To make those perfect long loaves, I like to roll it out into a rectangle and then roll it up and pinch the ends. This allows for a more even loaf for a better shape and more even baking time.
- To give the baguettes a crustier outside, place a few ice cubes in the oven. This will release steam and achieve that beautiful, golden crust.
- New to sourdough? Learn how to make a starter and care for it. Once you get the hang of it, I promise it is really easy. You can even make a ton of recipes from sourdough discard.
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Tools you may need:
Stand mixer with dough hook.
Measuring cups and spoons
How To Make Sourdough French Bread
Feed your starter 4-12 hours before starting this recipe. It should be very active and bubbly.
To your mixing bowl, add all of the ingredients.
Knead in a stand mixer using the dough hook until stretchy and pulling away from the sides of the bowl. This should take about 5-10 minutes. It should pass the ‘windowpane’ test, which is when you take a small piece of the dough and try to stretch it into a square-like shape. If you can stretch it thin enough where you can “see through it”, then the gluten formation is adequate.
If it doesn’t pass this test and is breaking apart, then place it back into the stand mixer and knead for a few more minutes.
Place in a large, oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap, beeswax wrap, or something that is airtight. This will keep the dough moist, preventing it from developing a hard skin.
Allow to ferment for 8 to 24 hours in a warm place.
The next day, it should have at least doubled in size.
Punch down the dough. Divide into two equal parts.
Shape it by rolling the dough into a flat rectangle (about 1/4 – 1/2 inch thickness) and roll up. Pinch the seam.
Place French bread dough onto a parchment-lined baking sheet.
Cover with a towel and allow to rise until doubled again. This could take a few hours depending on how warm your kitchen is.
Slash with lame.
Preheat to 400. Bake for 25 minutes.
For a more golden crust, add ice cubes in the oven. This helps add moisture and steam to make that golden, crustier crust.
Once it is done baking, pull it out of the oven and allow to cool completely before slicing.
Find More Delicious Sourdough Recipes:
- Sourdough Chocolate Cupcakes
- Sourdough Sandwich Rolls
- No-Knead Sourdough Bread
- Sourdough Blueberry Muffins
- Homemade Sourdough Bagels
If you try this recipe and love it, I would love if you could come back and give it 5 stars! Tag me on Instagram @farmhouseonboone
Sourdough French Bread
Ingredients
- 1 cup sourdough starter, 227 g
- 1 1/4 cups water, 295 g
- 2 teaspoon salt and, 10 g
- 4 cups all-purpose flour, 560 g
- 1 tablespoon honey, 21 g
- 2 tablespoons olive oil, 27 g
Instructions
- Feed your starter 4-12 hours before starting this recipe. It should be very active and bubbly.
- To your mixing bowl, add all of the ingredients.
- Knead in a stand mixer using the dough hook until stretchy and pulling away from the sides of the bowl. This should take about 5-10 minutes. It should pass the ‘windowpane’ test, which is when you take a small piece of the dough and try to stretch it into a square-like shape. If you can stretch it thin enough where you can “see through it”, then the gluten formation is adequate.
- Place in a large, oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap, beeswax wrap, or something that is airtight. This will keep the dough moist, preventing it from developing a hard skin.
- Allow to ferment for 8 to 24 hours in a warm place. The next day, it should have at least doubled in size.
- Punch down the dough. Divide into two equal parts.
- Shape it by rolling the dough into a flat rectangle (about 1/4 – 1/2 inch thickness) and roll up. Pinch the seam.
- Place French bread dough onto a parchment-lined baking sheet.
- Cover with a towel and allow to rise until doubled again. This could take a few hours depending on how warm your kitchen is.
- Slash with lame.
- Preheat to 400. Bake for 25 minutes. (For a more golden crust, add ice cubes in the oven. This helps add moisture and steam to make that golden, crustier crust.)
- Once it is done baking, pull it out of the oven and allow to cool completely before slicing.
Notes
- For a more golden crust, add ice cubes in the oven for a crustier crust.
- The windowpane test is when you take a small piece of the dough and try to stretch it into a square-like shape. If you can stretch it thin enough where you can “see through it”, then the gluten formation is adequate. If, after kneading, your dough just breaks apart, then knead it longer until it can pass this test.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Hi I have a couple questions. First, are you using AP or bread flour? I imagine that will make a difference in weight versus cups. I used bread and the bag states that a quarter cup is 110 grams which would equal to 440 per cup. Should I go by the grams? And the picture looks as though you have brushed with milk or butter. Is thst for photography or should I also do that? Thank you for your help.
Typically I am using AP flour. If it’s something different, I state that in my recipe. Brushing it with butter is just a personal preference.
What is the protein content of your AP flour?
I’ve printed this recipe and watched the video (Sourdough Bread 10 different ways, 21:10). At At 23:03, what are you painting the dough with? Milk? TIA.
An excellent recipe. So easy and so delicious! Have made it twice now. It’s my first bread recipe with sourdough. And looks so pretty, like at the stores, but without all the extra junk ingredients!! Thank you!
Awesome! So glad you enjoy the recipe!
My dough came out super sticky. It won’t shape at all because of it. Any way I could fix this in the future?
Also, is it still edible even if super sticky?
It sounds like your bread may have overproofed. This can make your dough really sticky and hard to work with. You can try baking it, but it may not get a good rise.
Have you ever baked these loaves and made them into your garlic bread and then froze those for reheating later?
I’m thinking I want to bake the loaves and put the garlic spread on it and then freeze it in that starter… rather than baking it again with the garlic spread and then freezing it. I feel like it would be kind of stale by then.
Thanks!!
Hi Lisa,
I have made two attempts at this bread. I am committed. For both batches my starter was bubbly and lovely, the dough rose great overnight in a warm place with airtight lid. When I go to shape the loaves the dough is quite wet and sticks to my hands. I flour my hands and shape the loaves. They are limpy and difficult to transfer to the baking sheet. At this point with both batches I wait with baited breath and hope the loaves rise. They don’t. They are in a warm place, sitting on top of the stove with the light on and the oven set on the 170F warm setting. Thermometer says its 80 degrees there (it rose great overnight in an 80 degree pantry). I baked the first batch anyway to see what would happen. They were edible and tasty just flat. I have followed the recipe. I weighed everything as well. I am just not sure where I went wrong. Any tips or tricks to help me find the culprit would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
Grace
PS I love your site here and your methods. No need to fuss over something that doesn’t need fussing about. Thanks again!
I am wondering if you have over fermented your loaves. Sometimes when things are fermented for too long, they become a sticky and cannot hold shape, resulting in a flat loaf of bread.
Can’t wait to try your french bread recipe. French bread is my favorite….
Thanks
Hope you enjoy!
i made this recipe and was confused about the flour measurement. According to my conversion chart, four cups of flour is 480 grams, not 560 as stated in this recipe. I was also not sure if the two tablespoons of oil was to go into the mixture or for oiling the bowl for the overnight rise. I used 4 cups of flour and had to continue to add flour. I also put the oil into the mix and it seemed to work.
This recipe was first created using cups. When I measure a cup it weighs 140g rather than the typical 120g, so that is what I use. The oil is for the bread recipe. If you oil the boil that would be extra. Hope that helps.
So I have been reengineering recipes since I was 13. That was a long time ago. My latest reengineered recipe is sourdough bread. I get the great sourdough flavor, with 30 minute rise times.
I use warm proof boxes tuned to ~90ºf. I use extra sourdough starter in excess of suggested recipes, and then I use fast-rise yeast. I get that great sourdough flavor, with rise times in the under 1 hour range. The bread I baked yesterday had a 30 minute first rise, and a 20 minute second rise, following a 12-1`8 hour recipe with really minor modifications.
Yeast and Sourdough starter serve 2 roles. One is a leavening agent, and the other is a flavoring agent. In the case of leavening, if you get the right results you are good to go. But in the case of flavoring, you generally have to let the yeast/starter time to work to develop the flavor. By using more than the usual amount of leavening, you can get the fully developed bread culture faster, and the flavor will be there if you balance it correctly.
Remember, a recipe is instructions someone wrote down in the past on how they made a food item. A recipe is not the law, and it is not the end-all be-all necessarily. If it takes 6 hours to go from a billion yeast/starter cells to 3000 billion yeast cells, keep in mind it is optional to only seed your loaf with 1 billion cells, you could have just started with more and shortened the time it takes for the yeast/starter to do its job. You still need some time for the yeast/starter to eat the flour of course, but the more you start with the faster you get there. There is more than one recipe to bake a loaf of bread.
I had the damertesult. Since I had enough to make two loaves, I took one out at 25 minutes and left the other one in until 35 minutes. Just curious what you thought of your French bread that you left in for the full 35 minutes…
I have so much starter, & I’m trying to branch out from the traditional boule shape bread baked in the dutch oven, I decided a French bread would be a good choice. I’m very familiar with the process, so I figured this recipe would be a good choice.
The dough for me rose fast, 10 hrs on the counter, but I wasn’t ready to bake just then. So I let it go til 15hrs. Seemed ok to do that. Everything went well (rose great, shaped into logs easily, 2nd rise was great…), but once in the oven, they just did’t seem to brown. I had the tray of steaming water on the bottom, sprayed the loaves with water while baking, yet they stayed pale a lot longer than my traditional French Bread recipes. I found that so odd. I’m wondering if it’s because this has starter and not yeast?
I have a new (ish) oven that bakes great, even a bit fast, so I know how it operates. So I found it surprising that I needing to bake these 35 minutes to get them to brown. The bottoms are golden, so I didn’t over-do it. Anyway, they are cooling now – and they look great – but they’re for tomorrow (Thanksgiving) so I won’t know how the inside is til then.
If they taste good and come out well on the inside, I’ll just know to bake these 35 min and not 20
I had the same result. So i took one loaf out after 25 min and the other out at 35 min. From a “brown-ness” perspective, I think 30 min would have been perfect. Wondering what you thought after trying yours.